Thursday, 18 June 2009

Confusion over words

And not just words, but opinions as well, mine for example. I remember long ago when I would change my opinions as I learnt stuff. I thought I knew everything by now but recently I seem to be confused.
Take for example the word 'naked'. Now generally when I use it I mean without clothes and when I explained to the police that we were planning a 'naked' bike ride I did mean it. Although on reflection what I ACTUALLY meant was 'naked apart from shoes and hats and facepaint and gloves and wigs' so not naked really. And what THEY thought I meant was naked except for underpants (and bras for ladies of course to cover up their unmentionables). It was all rather silly really and I was nearly part of the first naked bike ride to be arrested just because none of us really used a word to mean what it means, and because one person phoned the police and said that they were 'appalled' at the sight of us. So rather than hurrying us out of the city city to prevent further appallation (is that a word? It is now) they stopped us for twenty minutes so that more people could see us for more time and more traffic could be blocked by making a hundred naked people hang around on a main street.
Other words which confuse me are 'organiser'. Sean (my co-organiser, if thats what I am) says I am one and I say I am not. Sometimes I talk about things with people and then those things happen but does that mean I organise them?
Also 'nudist' - I'm not one but the thought of covering up for the naked bike ride so that I can be a proper marshall doesn't appeal.
And 'police escort'. Before the ride I would have put this in the same bucket of words as 'sell-out sanitised anarchy' but now I'm thinking how funny would it be if the police had to 'escort' climate camp, (for example). In other words hang around unobtrusively making it clear to anyone who didn't like it that these people had every right to make their views on a subject publicly known and that it was the police's job to protect and defned that right, which of course it is.
Hmmmm, words - funny things.
And opinions